Stay sharp!

At a party recently in an idyllic setting with children running amongst wild meadows and adults chatting over chilled rosé, as the sun set sleepily over the rolling hills in the distance – there were 2 topics of conversation – which was the best act at Glastonbury and what can we personally do to stop ourselves being replaced by robots – aka AI?

Since last October, artificial intelligence — in particular ChatGPT and its recently revealed successor, GPT-4 — has been the hot topic in conversations about the future of business, work, and creativity. ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer application in history — outpacing Instagram and even TikTok

We get it, it’s hard for some of us to remain upbeat in the face of exponential performance and pace, yet this is in fact, the best way to futureproof ourselves given the potentially massive implications of AI for our careers and the world around us

So, how do we stay sharp and relevant in this new world of AI?

The answer, we believe, is to futureproof ourselves

Futureproofing is not just about giving you the skills required to accelerate and move forward, futureproofing your work-life. It includes recalibrating, recasting, reinventing, and resetting, and if ever there was a time for recalibrating, remaking and reinventing ourselves, it is now

So, as a starting point – given the career disruption that is and will be generated by AI, whether you are a lawyer, a copywriter, an artist or a head of finance – now is the time to swap thinking about chasing career success for focussing on staying sharp by futureproofing you and how you uniquely can and want to add value

"The difference between try and triumph is just a little umph!" 

Marvin Phillip

Futureproofing builds greater happiness and progress than chasing career success. It is a great way to stay sharp. Building your knack of staying current. Building your knack of staying one step ahead when it comes to upgrading your skills and approach

Staying one step ahead when it comes to acquiring the right skills and experience; where to go and grow, will stimulate much more satisfaction and progress than focussing on how to jump up the career ladder – especially when that career ladder could be taking you to an end in which you are replaced by an algorithm

The false notion that achieving career success will lead to long-lasting happiness is called the arrival fallacy. “Most people believe that if you win the lottery or get that raise or promotion… then you’ll be all set” Tal Ben-Shahar, from the Happiness Studies Academy goes on to say, “At best, what success does is lead to a temporary spike in our levels of wellbeing, not to lasting happiness.” Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California encourages, “learning new things, will fend off feelings of staleness”, so futureproofing is all about learning new things - recalibrating, reinventing and resetting us!

So, stop thinking about the next career move and start thinking about futureproofing you by applying an outside in approach. Assess what’s happening externally – outside your job and your company. Look at changes on the horizon, with technology, within your industry, within your marketplace, economically and globally, then calibrate this with your present reality and future aspirations. That is the recalibration

Next is the process of reinventing and resetting

Reinventing happens through upgrading your skills, knowledge, experience and mind-set. Resetting happens by integrating the upgraded skills, knowledge experience and mind-set into your working approach

This is the ARTT of futureproofing from the outside in - recalibrating, reinventing, and resetting. You can apply this outside in approach too. It’s way more reinvigorating than simply looking for a promotion

How can you take an ‘outside in’ approach to futureproof you – look externally what’s on the horizon that’s worth you learning about, how can you stay sharp?

So, looking externally – let’s look at AI through the lens of futureproofing you. Rather than being in awe of it – think about how you can recalibrate, reinvent and reset by using AI to enhance our own unique value

On a simplistic level, for obvious things like speeding up your productivity by using GPT-4 or other tools to assist with brainstorming, creating drafts of emails, or performing rapid and complex research. This approach gives us the opportunity to focus on the things we can do which are unique to us, as individuals – not computers. Think about how you can sharpen and polish your personal brand - what makes you stand out, what do you bring, what do you offer and what do you really enjoy doing?

Futureproofing is not just about giving you the skills required to accelerate and move forward, futureproofing your work-life. It includes recalibrating, recasting, reinventing, and resetting

In a world of AI, it’s all too easy to throw our hands up and ‘give up’. But this misses crucial facts. Remember, AI involves machine learning (ML) algorithms that can learn a set of rules by studying a large amount of existing data (known as “training data”) and using the rules it learns to create something new based on an input (known as a “prompt”). It is a prediction engine that merely guesses the most likely next word or number– so in reality, it’s only as good as the inputs it has had previously, typically the wisdom of the crowds, which we all know is often less wisdom and more groupthink. AI isn’t generating new insights, that’s something we can all do

Similarly, actually recalibrating your approach so you are connecting with people courageously, talking to people and identifying new insights — becomes critical, because AI can only connect past dots and information it’s already been presented with. When you tap into information that isn’t already available online through your lived experience or novel interviews and conversations, you’re adding something genuinely new to the cultural conversation that wouldn’t be possible through AI. That’s something we all can do

Just as a lot of us find “sales speak, corporate speak, teaching speak” irritating and patronising – let’s relish the opportunity to reinvent and reset our personal brand, our tone and discover the advantage of sounding like ourselves, authentically embracing our own unique personality, connecting courageously and standing out through being humanly unpredictable and charmingly surprising. That’s something we can all do

Building your network by having meals with colleagues, attending conferences, and initiating conversations with a stranger may seem less important post pandemic. In truth they represent an opportunity to build connections and gain insights that simply aren’t possible through AI — and thus, they represent a unique competitive advantage we still possess. That’s something we can all do

When thinking about connecting courageously, let’s remember that humans are wired to respond to genuine emotions — so actually knowing and caring about what others think and feel, truly understanding yourself, and being capable of creating something machines cannot is an essential strategy to stand out in the age of AI

For example, GPT-4 has been trained using text prediction to be respectful and polite, display empathy (“I am sorry my answer upset you”), self-awareness (“I’m just an AI model and my answers are based on training data”), AI is not capable of experiencing or displaying the human version of these soft skills. That's something we can all do

When we futureproof something, we design or change it so that it will continue to be useful or successful in the future if the situation changes. That's something we can all do

Today decide where you can upgrade and stay sharp – a skill, some knowledge, an experience, or your mind-set – to start future-proofing you

To help you recalibrate, reinvent and reset we decided to create an Upskill to help you futureproof yourself...

Our Futureproof muscles Upskill combines bite-sized videos, private podcasts, 121 Mentor sessions, bespoke Journals and purposeful self-reflection exercises for you to apply - at work, at home, in your whole life

Building Futureproof muscles focusses on your career and what it takes to win today and tomorrow in the word of work - building the mind-sets of winning well, standing out, connecting courageously and futureproofing me You will grow your influence, your reputation and your future options, increasing your impact in your organisation and beyond

Discover more about our Futureproof muscles Upskill here